Difference Between Thomas Malthus And Karl Marx

Thomas Malthus was an English philosopher who lived from 1766 to 1834, An Essay on the Principle of Population, is one of the most influential pieces of writing in history. Not only did it help to establish the modern field of economics, it aided Charles Darwin on his regarding evolutionary science. Malthus’ core argument that runs a majority of the book is dedicated to the ‘Iron Law of Population’. This essay will seek to examine the premises of Thomas Malthus’ 1798 an Essay on the Principle of Population and conclude on its argument as well as provide a justification of the invalidity of the argument. In addition, it will identify its multiple influences on historical contexts throughout time.

On the other hand, Thomas Malthus had little hope for the future. He believed that the world’s population will increase faster than the production of food. The human race, he believed, would starve and there would be periods of chaos. Malthus said that the population increases at an exponential rate, nearly doubling amount. There is no way food growth would be able to catch up with population growth. Malthus’ solution was “War, Famine, and Plagues”. He believed that was the only way to decrease population and hopefully salvage the human race. These events would increase death rates liberating the world of disaster. Malthus tried to persuade lower classes form creating children and from marriage. At that time the lower classes were considered to be given higher wages, which would increase the makings of children and marriages. Thomas Malthus pleaded with everyone to make a change in order to decrease population.

In 1798 utilitarian Thomas Malthus published An Essay on the Principle of Population as an argument against an utopian society based on social and economic equality. Malthus believed that if the human population is left unchecked then the population would outgrow the resources necessary to maintain the population. Malthus’s argued that the population will continue to grow and the burden will unavoidably put on the poor population. However, the inequality of population would be a good thing in terms of controlling the population.

Thesis: The topic of human population growth is an important issue due to its impacts upon people in developing countries, economics, religion, food production, and the environment; without any limitations, population growth can lead to negative consequences, such as famine and environmental destruction, or even positive outcomes, such as potential economic growth.

The increasing human population and its impact on the world we live in has always been a prominent topic of discourse throughout history. A common theme that originates from human population is food scarcity. However, is an increasing population necessarily interrelated with food scarcity? Naturally, polarising perspectives on this subject will arise. Some are rather pessimistic and look at extreme population control measures, such as the neo-Malthusian angle that J. Kenneth Smail expresses in his aptly named essay: Remembering Malthus: A preliminary Argument for a Significant Reduction in Global Human Numbers (2002). Other angles on the subject are a bit more hopeful such as the views expressed

Thomas Malthus stated that the human population would eventually decrease significantly. His reasoning was that there would be a scarcity of food and other vital resources, leaving only the fittest of the species to survive. These “fittest” of the species would then pass on their traits to their offspring. Darwin used this is a firm foundation for his natural selection theory. Natural selection is the idea that the organisms that are the best suited for the environments they live in, are able to survive and pass on their genetic traits with huge success to the next generations of said organism.

Imagine if Earth’s population was so large that all of the world’s resources had to be exhausted to their last limits just to provide food for only half of the population. That is exactly what 17th-century demographer Thomas Malthus envisioned when he predicted how the world’s population would affect the world’s resources. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, published in the late 18th century, Malthus expressed many controversial predictions in which he argued that the increase of resources was arithmetic while the increase in population was exponential; thus, he concluded that the population would greatly outpace the amount of resource growth on Earth. Being that Malthus made his predictions during the industrial revolution (which was when North America and Europe reached stage two of the demographic transition), many critics of his theory claim that Malthus’ calculations were inaccurate because he did not consider technological advances in relation to food production. Also, Malthus’ critics believe that he overestimated population increase (mainly because of the time period he lived in) and (adverb) underestimated the production rate of resources. Though both sides of the debate are plausible, it is evident that Malthus’ views were incorrect because modern-day statistics regarding population and food production do not support his claims. Therefore, because of Malthus’ uncircumspect approach when he predicted population

While reading this chapter I remembered a topic which was brought up in Zozula’s 370 theories class. It was a discussion about marxist believes on government and its interaction with the surplus population. In sum, Marx believed that the government used social welfare and incarceration controlled the amount of surplus population which exists at a certain time. This method is used to prevent uprising among the population because lack of opportunity and resources by limiting the number of individuals who lack a job or help from the government. But, a surplus population must exist in order for industry to function properly and competition to exist in the job marketplace in order to keep wages low and the owners of product in control. Policy would be changed in order to control the amount of surplus population in the form of tough on crime laws or increased access to welfare. In this chapter, the 1970s and 1980s are highlighted as a time when less educated workers pay began to decline as industry left the U.S. and we became more of an import rather an export dependent country.

My point of view of the claim that Thomas Malthus attributed many social problems to the number of people on earth because yes there are so many problems for alot of things. Him predicting the population growth would always exceed food production and that there is circumstance would inevitably lead to famine, pestilence and with war. Having hard situations like that are going to bring problems predicting the population growth is going to be a problem because it will exceed food production.

Marx stated that, “ Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (Pg. 1). Whether viewed as the struggle of races or as the struggle of classes, Darwinism is clearly a predominant idea in Marx’s theory of social and political life in the late nineteenth-century. In his theory, Marx started with the great political revolution that gave Europe the aspect it had, the French Revolution. This era was known to everyone at the time to have been a struggle for supremacy, waged by the bourgeois against nobility and royalty. After this struggle, new class struggles originated. The struggle carried on in England by the manufacturing capitalists against the landowners dominated politics; at the same time the working class revolted against the bourgeoisie. Marx goes on to prove that these class distinctions were owing to the various functions each one played in the productive process. Production is the social labor process by which men obtain their means of subsistence from nature. It is the production

In 18th century Europe was ripe from the Industrial Revolution. The world was taking on a more optimistic thinking. However, Thomas Malthus turned against this notion with a pessimist view of population growth. The reproduction of humans and the depletion of food were evident and are still evident today. The world is becoming more populous and with it more prosperous; humans as a whole are consuming more food, water, and natural resources than ever. In Malthus’ time the same

Thomas Malthus believed that natural rates in reproduction, when not checked, would lead to an increase of population. He also went on to state that along with the natural rate of population growth that the rate of food production would only increase at about half of that rate. If an attempt wasn’t made to keep the population under control then overt actions would be required to manipulate food production or order to stave off starvation. Malthus had two ideas that he believed would

However, Malthus’ particular use of “reason” in his essay contains within it implications about the status of women and families in his model. The simplest expression of Malthus’ preventive check does not independently apply to the economic status of women: “Impelled to the increase of his species by an equally powerful instinct, reason interrupts his career and asks him whether he may not bring beings into the world for whom he cannot provide the means of subsistence” (Ch 2). The decision, here, is motivated by the fear of starvation, or lowering of economic status, however, it is reason that allows one to reach this conclusion.

One of the last founding fathers of sociology is Karl Marx. He postulated many sociological theories that revolutionized sociology and modern history for that matter. Marx's Communist Manifesto was the basis of many political movements in the 20th century. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx describes the class conflict between the proletarians and the bourgeoisie aka the working class and the ruling class in a capitalist system. The top few percent rule over the majority working class to keep control of the scarce resources they have. Karl Marx believed in the idea of alienation in a capitalist society. Workers become estranged from their humanity and their individuality. Capitalism turns the regular human from “homo sapien” species into the “homo faber” species (human worker). Marx also believed that the bourgeoisie uses many techniques to keep the proletariat happy and servient. The whole idea of capitalism is built around a “fetishism of commodities” that makes people love material things and money as much as friends and loved ones which makes people come back for more. Religion is also used as a way to control the working masses. It is a quick and easy way for the bourgeoisie to

Thomas Robert Malthus is one of the most controversial figures in the history of economics. He achieved fame chiefly from the population doctrine that is now closely linked with his name. Contrary to the late-eighteenth-century views that it was possible to improve people’s living standards, Malthus held that any such improvements would cause the population to grow and thereby reverse these gains. Malthus also sparked controversy with his contemporaries on issues of methodology (by arguing that economics should be an empirical rather than a deductive science), over questions of theory (by holding that economies can experience prolonged bouts of high unemployment), and on policy issues (by arguing against free